Traffic Jam (No Longer Here)

 

We move like slow morning

traffic, deep cramming

ourselves into the narrows

the way desperate salmon

cram themselves upstream

in a rush to spawn and die.

We survive on salaries of

panic, and breathe at

the pace of rage.

 

Sometimes God appears

to crawl one subtle pivot

at a time. The air becomes

thick with the exhaust of

our prayers and the scent

of sweat and wanting.

 

We search for better places.

We plead for easier ways to

pull ahead. But we remain

in still rooms where furniture

never moves, where features

around us remain familiar yet

unseen, where libraries remain

vacant and locked. We fail to grasp

the witness of trees who stand

open in their gift of waiting.

 

In our rush to independence

we miss abandoned roads

where freedom turns us into

love for the whole wide sky.

We overlook the edges beyond

our births and oceans who ferry us

past the lands of who we were  

in our wish to be no longer here.

 

Who doesn’t turn to Mother Mary

in times like these: her tenderness

of silences; her wisdom of

surrender; her gift of

uncomplicated fear …

 

Somehow we need to return

to the days of loss and wonder,

the days of uneven pace where

hope and seeds follow

nature’s will.

 

Given time, water

does erode stone.

Given time, light

will surprise us.

Given time, our eyes

adjust to the dark and

we learn by heart the

ways we shouldn’t go.